A Night of Books
by Scuttlest
Summary: Like many nights, they read together. Then one offer of a book intended as a compliment turns into embarrassment. Yet that little mistake allows their connection to deepen. Avatar/Sumia. FE13.


**The Avatar is named 'Rain' in this story. (Probably going to have to put that line at the beginning of all my Awakening fics. Tsk.)**

**Initially, this story was going to simply center on the Avatar having irregular sleeping patterns. An idea inspired by the late-night barrack quotes in Awakening. But, while I was writing, I did a run of Awakening focusing on getting all of the male Avatar's S rank supports. Done with two save files, pretty much identical to how you could use the Tower of Valni trick in FE8 to get all the support conversations in that game. (Now I just need to wait for the Aversa Spotpass chapter to be released, then I'll get started on getting all the S ranks for a female Avatar.) As such, since I had Awakening romance on the brain, this became a romance story. Not my speciality, even if I have written a few romance stories.**

**Anyway, if I were to select a wife for my male Avatar on a balance of character favoritism, and more practical values (pair up bonuses, the wife's classes/skills, etc.) my choice would be one of the Pegasus Knights of the present day characters, Sumia and Cordelia (and Lissa merits an honorable mention I suppose, since I S ranked with her on my very first run of the game). I favor Sumia over Cordelia, sooooo, I wrote an Avatar/Sumia fic.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

* * *

Rain looked over the map laid out over the table. It was his job to plot a route for the Shepherds to take, and it was his job to consider all the dangers they could possibly face, and supplies to deal with every imaginable possibility. They weren't decisions and conclusions to make quickly, especially when they had plenty of time to plan.

The only person he normally discussed this with was Chrom, who sat right beside the tactician. Rain yawned as he looked at the map, it was far from the first one he had made while plotting a path. Chrom was starting to take notice of how tired Rain seemed to be.

"You should be more awake by this time in the day." Chrom said, somewhat bothered by the frequency at which Rain was yawning. "It's noon."

"I just woke up." Rain said, not taking his eyes from the map. His index finger was tracing a path out, and he seemed more then alert enough for path plotting. Even so, Chrom took note of the minor revelation, and stopped paying attention to the map.

"When do you go to sleep?" Chrom asked. Not even the soldiers who handled the late night patrols woke up at this time of the day.

"Well, after everyone else has gone to bed." Rain answered. "I lose track of time."

"I wouldn't lose track of time like that even when training." Chrom said. Recalling the times that Frederick or Lissa had come in while he was practicing his sword shops to tell him that he missed one appointment or another. "What's the last thing you do before you go to bed?"

Rain was still busy moving a hand across the map, but eventually finished a theoretical path the army could follow. "I… read. I study for the sake of making better tactics, and I read some more casual books. Sumia likes to read with me."

"Sumia?"

Rain nodded. "We spend some time together every night, reading. She likes recommending stories for me to read. Though she leaves to go to bed at least two hours before I do."

"Perhaps you should skip out of reading with Sumia tonight." Chrom suggested. "It would do us no good if our tactician is groggy during an early morning battle."

Rain pursed his lips slightly. "I'd hate to disappoint Sumia. She loves having someone to read with." Briefly, he thought of the only other real book readers among the Shepherds, Miriel and Ricken. Miriel looked at books completely differently then Sumia did, preferring documentations of science over novels. Ricken, Ricken also read novels, but for some reason Sumia preferred to read with Rain instead. Perhaps it had something to do with Ricken's tendency to make lengthy verbal commentaries on the stories he read.

Chrom sighed. "Just… try to go to bed earlier then normal, for tonight at least."

"Of course." Rain agreed. Chrom looked at his tactician, who had become his best friend in short order. The words sounded honest, but Chrom was doubtful that Rain would actually remember to go to bed. The tactician had a tendency to forget the world around him when he started reading.

Both of them turned their attention back to the map, and eventually finalized a route the Shepherds would take. They both rose, Chrom would begin training, and probably be visited by Frederick as the knight scrutinized every inch of Rain's route for any possible ulterior motive by the tactician. Rain, if his previous daily schedule was anything to go off of, spent free time talking with the other members of the army, training moderately in the meantime. Then, Chrom presumed, as the sun fell, he would meet Sumia for a night of reading. Hopefully, he'd decide to go to bed around the time Sumia did.

* * *

Rain flicked a finger, a small spark of electricity generated via his Thunder tome danced on the tip of the finger for a moment. The day was passing, and the sky was turning yellow as dusk came. He had spent the day assisting other soldiers in their training. It was helpful if he knew the capability of every individual soldier, and directly having matches with them was a good way to determine everyone's strengths.

Of course, that many training matches in a row left him aching. It didn't help that some members of the army fought a little too serious during training fights. He found himself walking toward his tent with a slight, but almost maddeningly consistent pain in his left hip, and was aching in quite a few other spots. The pain didn't impair his movement, and it wasn't strong enough to justify using a precious Heal staff. Hopefully it would begin to go away when he sat down for a while.

Using the light of electricity from his Thunder tome as an arcane lantern, he entered his tent. Immediately, he smiled at what he saw. "Sumia, you beat me here. I hope you didn't start without me."

The Pegasus Knight smiled at the tactician. "Of course not. Besides…" Her smile dropped. "I'd probably just give myself paper cuts without you watching."

Rain bit back a response to Sumia's self-deprecation, anything he might say to her would sound like shallow flattery. Though he knew that the girl should stop putting herself down like this. He sat down next to her, just like he always did. A nightly encounter with Sumia in his private tent… gossip in the army could easily get out of hand if he had tried to keep these meetings secret. He didn't announce that he was meeting with Sumia, but he didn't make any secret of it either. Chrom apparently hadn't aware of this, but roughly a third of the army was. Hopefully everyone knew that they were _just_ reading books together.

"What will we be reading tonight?" Rain asked, stopping his thoughts about how his time with Sumia could be misinterpreted, and turning to the large stack of books. They had both finished their last books last night, so both of them would start a new one tonight. After how much he enjoyed the last few novels he read, he had no objection to Sumia picking the book he would read.

"Oh, I found a book where the main character is exactly like you!" Sumia announced, happily handing a novel to Rain, who accepted the offer. Rain looked at the title of the book, _The Man Who Could Do Everything_. He just stared at the title for a moment, and wondered how highly Sumia thought of his talents. He chuckled lightly, finding the thought both flattering and embarrassing.

"What… will you be reading?" Rain asked. Sumia's smile dropped somewhat and she revealed another book. This one had a oddly epic title, and it seemed to be novelization of one war or another. "A war story?"

She nodded. "After the Faith War book, I thought I'd try out something similar."

"Okay." Rain looked at his book again, wondering exactly what it would be like. The character seemed almost exactly like himself? He wouldn't consider himself a person who could do 'everything', Sumia had to have been stretching it a little. He took a breath as he opened the hard cover.

They began to read. At the beginning, Rain's book portrayed its main character as the perfect war tactician who had the respect and trust of every single individual soldier he commanded, and always had the perfect solution to every situation. At first, Rain found himself blushing at the thought that this was how Sumia pictured him. Then, the character changed rather quickly. He seemed to become more callous, cruel, and developed a desire to kill people who disagreed with him.

"Um, Sumia, how far into this book did you read before you decided that I was like the main character?"

"Just the first chapter. Why?"

Rain cleared his throat. "The main character, starts to become a bit of a psychopath at about the start of chapter three. He starts killing people just for questioning orders."

Sumia cringed. "O-oh." She put her book down and turned to Rain. "T-that's not how I think of you! I could never think of you like that, I promise. I-I honestly didn't know that's how the story developed." Her hands went up to her forehead as she started to fluster. "I would n-never-"

"What… do you think of me?" Rain asked, speaking calmly to try and keep Sumia from falling into hysteria. "From what you thought of the book, it's like you think of me as Mr. Perfect."

Sumia looked down, staring at her lap, and folded her hands. "You're, the complete opposite of me, Rain. Not clumsy, ditzy, or completely hopeless. No matter the situation on the battlefield, you find a solution, we win battle after battle without any of us dying. You've even made me a competent soldier. I wanted to give you a book as a compliment, but, oh, why didn't I read further into it?" She put her hands up to her face, embarrassed etched across her features.

"Sumia." Rain put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "You didn't need to try and compliment me with a book, and I'm not the one who made you a better soldier, that was all you. And shouldn't Chrom be able to inspire you better then I can?"

"No. Well, yes, I-" She trailed off, taking a deep, composing breath. "When the captain is watching, I worry about every little flaw in what I'm doing, and I can barely walk. When it's you watching me, I feel like I have to show the tactician that I can be useful when we're fighting, and for some reason I seem to be able to accomplish things when you're near. It's good that I can fight when you're near, because everyone knows that I'm completely useless off the battlefield."

"Sumia, you are _not_ useless off of the-"

"I trip over everything!" Sumia said, seemingly not hearing Rain's attempt to console her. "When people ask me to get something, I always get the wrong thing. People ask me to pull up weeds and I pull up the flowers. I'm not even a pretty girl, I-"

"Sumia!" Rain gave the girl a small shake to get her attention. "No more of that."

The girl breathed slowly, looking at the hand gripping her shoulder. "Do I talk too much, too? I'm just too-"

"Listen to me, Sumia. You are not useless, you've proven yourself one of the better Shepherds, even if you don't realize it yourself. And I don't know where you got the idea that you aren't pretty, you, um-" His hand drifted from Sumia's shoulder to rest lightly on her hair.

His face grew hot, but he didn't stop talking. "Don't let anyone tell you that you aren't, b-beautiful, because you, are." He blinked, then suddenly wanted to take back all the words he just said. He studied Sumia's face for her reaction, while dreading to see anything.

Sumia drew in one shaking breath as her face turned red. Rain sighed. "I just want you to understand, Sumia, you're one of the people I feel the closest to among the Shepherds. I feel as close to you as I do to Chrom and Lissa, and maybe, more. I don't like seeing you going on about your faults, there are so many things you're doing well."

They just sat looking at each other for a long moment. _Guess we won't be doing much reading tonight _Rain mentally noted. At least Sumia had stopped going on about her faults, which Rain felt Sumia always exaggerated to an absurd extent.

"Rain, what do you see in me?" Sumia whispered. "How can you stand to be friends with someone as hopeless as me?"

"Sumia…" Rain took in a breath and readied himself to talk. "No matter what you think of yourself, you are irreplaceable to me. The Shepherds wouldn't feel like the Shepherds without you." As he looked at the girl he knew that when he called her beautiful it wasn't idle flattery, even if he wasn't quite sure what he was thinking when he said it.

"People console me when I do things wrong, but…" Sumia looked down at her lap, then into Rain's face. "I don't think anyone's ever called me 'irreplaceable' before." She waited for a time, seeming to be debating something in her head. She spoke again, with a very hesitant voice. "Rain, if it's not too much trouble, um, rather then go back to my tent tonight, can I… s-stay with you?"

"I'm… not sure why, but I don't see why not." He looked, and Sumia's face lit up.

Her hand reached out and clasped Rain's. He glanced down, a little surprised at how strong Sumia's grip was. His eyes diverted to Sumia's.

"Let's not read, tonight." Sumia said. Her expression plainly revealed that she was fearing rejection, and she continued to speak. "For tonight, I just want to sit with you."

Rain opened his mouth to speak, but found nothing to properly say. Instead, he raised the hand Sumia wasn't holding and brushed it across Sumia's hair, then grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her to him.

* * *

Chrom was standing in a morning war council meeting. They never did this first thing in the morning before, it was just a little test to see if Rain could get up in the early morning. Right now his only company was Frederick, but Rain was supposed to arrive, especially since the meeting couldn't begin without him. As the minutes ticked by, and eventually turned into an hour, Chrom finally sighed. "I'll go get him."

Exiting the tent, Chrom started to head straight for Rain's private tent. One of only a handful of individuals who was entitled to having his own tent, rather then bunk with a number of other soldiers. Some kind of measure would have to be taken to get Rain to go to bed sooner and wake up earlier. This schedule really couldn't be allowed to continue, and-

Chrom moved the flap of Rain's tent out of the way, and paused at what he saw. Rain was still in his tent, and he was still sleeping. More surprising, was the fact that Sumia was still with him. They had fallen asleep in the chairs, Rain's bed still made and untouched. Rain was sitting in the chair, Sumia was in the same chair, and had fallen asleep leaning onto the tactician's chest. The way Rain's hands were around Sumia made it clear that this wasn't a gesture of friendship between the two.

Chrom could see very well what was going on. He chuckled, never expecting Rain would have had a moment like this with any of the soldiers. He wouldn't dare wake them, not when they both looked so completely content.

"I suppose you can sleep in one more morning, Rain." Chrom said, and he smirked as he backed out of the tent.

* * *

**Something about the ending of this fic seems abrupt to me, but I'm rolling with it.**

**I've come to associate the Avatar with Sumia and Cordelia on the subject of romance, and on any given run, the Pegasus Knight that doesn't marry the Avatar will end up going unmarried. So, Cordelia only gets married every three runs, more or less. (Though Cordelia's had both Henry and Libra in past runs. And Sumia's had Gaius and Henry.)**

**And while I'm talking about Sumia, I just want to say... to heck with the game obviously trying to push Chrom/Sumia as 'canon'. I typically have Chrom with Olivia. While I'm not really a shipper, you might as well come up with headcanon couples for a game like Awakening.**

**Please review.**


End file.
